Size matters: Why cell size is vital for minimizing cost of air-cooling in battery packs

There is wide disagreement in the automotive industry over what size cells are ideal for battery packs. Because of the inherent complexity of packs and the diversity of applications, current lines of thought are loosely opinion based. In order to start quantitatively examining the problem, this study measures the performance of a range of cylindrical cell sizes in a generic battery module (modeled in COMSOL) and estimates the cost of a fan for air-cooling. The results reveal that cell size has a large impact on the cost of cooling, and a clear minimum is reached.